Expecting the Unexpected

The other night my husband was complaining about all the work needed around the house and garden right now.

I started to agree with him as I prepared a salad. Then I stopped and looked around the room with its intact walls, floor, windows, and ceilings. The image of mangled wood and tossed roofs and cars in Moore, Oklahoma, flashed through my head.

“We have no reason to complain about the work needed here,” I said. “We still have a house to clean and paint. Our garden is intact, weeds and all.”

The tornado that hit the community of Moore this past week flattened walls, roofs, and windows, but it did not flatten the intangible and collective backbone of the people living through a nightmare of debris. Twenty-four people lost their lives when the tornado hit, and I pray for their families.

When I look at the images, I wonder how anyone at all survived.

We are in a time of climate change. Climate isn’t the weather report on temperatures, winds, or storms. Climate is the long-term study of weather events. Climate change deals with more than temperatures rising, although that is a major contributing factor to some of the changes we’re seeing. Climate change also means that the weather will be more intense and the storms more frequent. Seasonal dates are being challenged each year. There’s an old saying that is appropriate for what we’re witnessing: The only constant is change.

The fact that only twenty-four folks perished in the tornado in Moore shows that we are more prepared than ever and that the spirit of rising above adversity in Oklahoma right now, is a superb example of the flexibility that will be required of all of us in the coming years.

I was going to put in an excerpt from my new book and then add a plug. But as I write this post, I don’t want to do anything but bow my head in prayer for those who perished and those who remain to clean up the mess on the ground. God speed, Moore, OK.

Beautiful post! And it is a reminder for us to stop and think about our lives and the life of our planet. And having just returned from a music festival at the Baha’i temple in Wilmette, Illinois, I can only quote from the Baha’i Writings: The earth is one country and mankind its citizens.

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All text copyright Patricia Camburn Zick 2012-2013. I encourage linking and reblogging of my blog posts. However, it is not all right to copy and past portions of my posts and use for your own profit without crediting me as the author. It is illegal.